The Smith's take on the Poly July 2010-Finished!3/1/11

[heidijanesmith]

Everyone has their own little "quirks". My favorite photo was the shot of the entrance to POLY from the monorail,,,at night...just heavenly.

We loved the Poly, especially at night. It was lovely to walk around and just enjoy the grounds, pools and GCH. I am glad you like the pic

 

[Darkfirewolfe]

Here is why I LOVE Disney and the Poly staff. We went back to the room to check on Alex and found her not feeling well, but had stopped throwing up. Good sign! I went to Captian Cooks to see if they had anything she could eat, luckily enough they were serving chicken noodle soup. I wanted just the broth for her and asked the CM who was checking people out if I could just have a cup of broth and explained that my daughter was sick. She said to hang on a minute and she'd be right back. The CM came back with a cup of broth, saltine crackers, apple sauce, grapes and a refillable mug with Sprite in it. She gave all this to me at no charge! What a wonderful CM!!

Food in hand I came back to the room and the Mousekeeper was there. I explained to her that I have a sick child in the room, so could I just give her the dirty towels. She not only took the dirty towels, but made a towel animal, gave us new towels and toiltries and took out the garbage. She was wonderful!

Alex was very thankful for the broth and managed to keep some of it down, but knew that she would not be able to go to the parks today. She was so disappointed to not be able to ride her favorites, Space and Splash mountain. As we were not staying Club level there was not a DVD player in the room, nor does Disney have pay per view movies. I took a chance and went to the GCH and asked the concierge desk if they had a DVD player we could use or rent, explaining that my daughter was not able to leave the room today. The wonderful CM said not only could we use their DVD player, but he gave me a gold key with access to the Hawaii Club building to have full access to all of their movies. He called the Hawaii building to let them know i was coming. He also upgraded our park tickets to park-hopper so Alex could go back to the MK when she felt better. At this point I am about in tears, I am so greatful for this wonderful CM.
I hightail it to the Hawaii building and the wondeful Club staff lets' us rent three movies to return at our lesure and a 6 pack of Sprite for her. As I am leaving the building, so thankful and greateful to the wonderful staff at the Poly...i lose it a little and cry in happiness.
Alex is thrilled with her movies, so happy that she can go to MK again and tries the Sprite.
I go back to the GCH, ask for the manager on duty to express my thanks for the wonderful staff at Captian cooks, our mousekeeper, the Club staff and the concierge staff.

:
I knew about the chicken soup - b/c on one of our trips a man next to us at the Kona cafe was taking some back to his room b/c he was sick. But it sounds like they really went above & beyond for you. That's so wonderful - lots of pixiedust for you !

 

[heidijanesmith]

:
I knew about the chicken soup - b/c on one of our trips a man next to us at the Kona cafe was taking some back to his room b/c he was sick. But it sounds like they really went above & beyond for you. That's so wonderful - lots of pixiedust for you !

Thanks for the pixiedust! The wonderful staff made her WDW stay even more magical, way above and beyond the call of duty

 

[heidijanesmith]

We decided to check out a couple more rides after leaving the WWoHP area.

On our way to the Hulk we walked by the Seuss area:

On to to the Hulk! Anthony's favorite rollercoater at Universal The best thing for our family was the use of Express pass. Staying on site at the Portofino Bay Hotel allowed us all to use the Express Pass as many times as we wanted to, at any time! This allowed us to just explore IoA at our leisure with no plan, no touring guide. Much different than WDW for us.

Here is a couple pics of the Hulk, which we all really liked!

The kids wanted to ride Doomsday Falls. Rod and I passed on this ride, I just wasn't feeling it.

A cute pic! Even though Rod's eyes are closed!

At this point, we were hot and tired and ready to head back to the hotel. We used the rickshaw's almost the entire trip as the boat's were always crowded and never seemed to be available when we needed it.

Up next: Portofino Bay pics

 

[heidijanesmith]

Hello everyone, it's been a crazy couple of days here! We got 11 inches of snow and then 25-35 mph winds! This AM the temp was -8, windchill of -30..... I am really missing the Florida July weather!

Back to the TR:

We decided to take a break and go back to the PBH. We liked this hotel, but did not love it. The theme was beautiful, the rooms were well done and had a huge bathroom. We did not like our room location, the farthest from transportaion, the pool and the lobby.

Here are some pics of the hotel:


Cute scooters to sit on and pretend that you are in Italy:

The view from our side of the hotel:

Our building:

The entrance to our wing:

Our room- standard view, standard room.

Up next: City walk and Margaritaville!

 

[heidijanesmith]

We decided to check out City Walk, as we had glanced at it on the way out of IoA. There are many, many, many eateries to choose from in City Walk. We decided on Margaritaville, as my parents had been to the original one in Key West.

There was a really nice animal trainer outside the restaurant. He had several birds that were trained to take picture with guests. Alex was in heaven! She ended up getting her pic with the blue Mccaw. He kept nibbling on her sterling silver necklace, it was really cute. We all ended up getting a family pic and paid for a package of pics.

Here are some pics of the resaurant:

After a wonderful dinner, we headed back to IoA:

Another ride on the Hulk, no wait with our pass. The regular wait time was over 60min

We decided to head to WWoHP the other way around the park this time, we passed by Jurassic Park:

Up next:
More WWoHP pics

 

[heidijanesmith]

By the time we finished dinner, it was about 6:00 PM. We decided to head back to WWoHP and see what the lines were like. Here are a few pics:

WWoHP was packed! We could not get into any shops, 2-3 hour wait. The butterbeer line was 1hour, FP ride was 105 minutes. This was crazy, crazy busy!

We decided to head to the Lost Contient and try the ride there. There were no lines at all!


Up next the Lost Contienent.....

 

[Gabe's Mom]

Loving your report. Glad you are including the Universal part of your trip. We are staying at the Poly in March, you have me even more excited!
Michelle

 

[heidijanesmith]

Loving your report. Glad you are including the Universal part of your trip. We are staying at the Poly in March, you have me even more excited!
Michelle

I am so glad! We absolutely love the Poly and will be hard to stay at YC on our next trip.

We enjoyed US, as it was our first time there.

Hope you have a great time and enjoy your stay at the Poly

 

[heidijanesmith]

We decided to check out the Lost Continent land of IoA as WWoHP was packed! There was hardly any body around and no lines at all for Poseidon's Fury. I had not read up much on this ride/attraction, so I had no idea what to expect. It was fun, standing only though. My feet protested! I tried to lean against the walls or railings whenever possible. Here are some pics of the queue line, the theming is really well done.

We meandered around the rest of the land and then headed back to WWoHP at night. Still packed! Some of the pics are blury, we were being tossed around a bit by the crowd.


Pic of the huge crowds!

FJ sign stating 75min wait and no singles line!

Some night shots that didn't turn out so well.....

Took a couple of pics on the way out of IoA, we were done at this point and ready to head back to PBH

Jurassic Park:

Up next: Tomorrow spent at US

 

[heidijanesmith]

Sorry for my absense, it has been crazy around here!

We decided to spend our last day at Universal Studios. As we had our unlimitted Universal Express Pass, there was no real touring plan of the day. We arrived a few minutes before opening to head to Rip Ride Rocket, as this was the one attraction that did not have an express pass availability.

Here is the roller coaster ride vehicle--really feels like you are in the open:

Next we checked out our favorite Nick character Spongebob!

Up next the Mummy ride!

 

[heidijanesmith]

Up next we decided to check out the Mummy's Revenge. It's so hard to describe this ride. It's a rollercoaster and it's not. It was visually one of the best queue's and rides that I have ever been on. The Mummy movies are some of our favorite movies, so I had high hopes for this ride. We went on it over and over again, seeing new things every time.

We decided to head out and take a break at this point. Stopped to take a couple of pics outside the park.

Up next: our last night!

 

[heidijanesmith]

After our afternoon break, my son, Anthony decided to go back to US by ourselves. Rod and Alex wanted to hangout at the hotel pool and relax for our last night.

Anthony and I first wanted to try the Simpsons ride. We used the Express Pass, but our wait was still about 20 min. Not bad, considering the regular line was 60 min.

The Simpsons ride is a motion simulator ride, similar to Star Tours but the screen is huge like Soarin. I am very prone to motion sickness, so I just closed my eyes if I started to feel ill. That worked well for me.

On to Men in Black. We really liked this ride, similar to Buzz at WDW

Up next: Finishing our night at US

 

[heidijanesmith]

The end of our trip........

Well this has been really fun, I really enjoyed going down memory lane and looking at our pics again. I am a little sad to be finishing

Our last ride of the night was Jaws. I wasn't sure how scary this ride really was, we thought it was more cheezy than scary.

I took a couple pics as it was getting dark on the way out:

We headed back to PBH and took some lovely night shots:

I called Rod and Alex to meet us down at a great little bar to sit outside and enjoy our last night.

We had a great server, who took our last pic of the trip:

Well, I hope you have enjoyed reading my TR!

Till next time

Heidi and family

 

[Micka Mouse]

subbing....didn't get to finish. Enjoying so far !

 

[Lzylitnin]

Thank you for taking the time to post a trip report! I've enjoyed reading it. Now I'm really excited about our Poly stay!

 

[heidijanesmith]

subbing....didn't get to finish. Enjoying so far !

Thank you! It was fun to go down memory lane and can't wait until our next trip

 

[heidijanesmith]

Thank you for taking the time to post a trip report! I've enjoyed reading it. Now I'm really excited about our Poly stay!

Thank you!! I hope you have a wonderful time at the Poly. An awesome resort that truely made our trip more magical.

 

[Rosebud123]

Love your TR! My dd got sick one year at WDW. Same deal in that in only lasted 24 hours. Still stinks, though!

Sounds like you had a blast.

 

[heidijanesmith]

Love your TR! My dd got sick one year at WDW. Same deal in that in only lasted 24 hours. Still stinks, though!

Sounds like you had a blast.

It was a fantastic trip. Fun to look back at as now my DS has graduated HS and has been in the Marines for a couple of years.